The new media and urban space
 Urban space and the new media

First Installation:
29.7.2000 Last update:
30.01.2010

Lecture given at the Bauhaus, Dessau on 07.07. and 08.07.2000

1. Introduction

I am not an architect, an urban planner,
a sociologist or a Quake Level programmer. I am primarily an artist
and an art historian. And it is from that perspective that i speak
about artists whose projects and interventions employ urban space
and the new media. However, both terms, urban space and
new media, introduce fundamental problems. The new
media of today are the old media of tomorrow.
The dynamics of the global telecommunications village can hardly
be aptly described and understood in terms of space or urbanity.
A great majority of the data and telecommunication streams have
become particularly non-spatial and non-observable, a phenomenon
for which Manuel Castells has coined the term "space of flows".
First of all, I would like to define some of the central terms
I am going to apply in order to clarify the central themes under
discussion in the context of this workshop. For the way in which
we think about certain concepts and relations will most certainly
determine how we can observe and understand them at all.

2. Definition of terms

2.1 Communication with media

Instead of considering urban space,
I would prefer to speak of social systems. This gives us
the advantage of maintaining a more general, objective and abstract
viewpoint. Such a shift of emphasis exempts us from depending
exclusively on more or less problematical definitions of urbanity
or space. For precisely these terms seem to function as the decisive
obstacles in ones attempt at aptly coming to grips with
the complexity of social processes.

To put it briefly, social systems are
systems of communication. They consist solely of communication.
The persons, machines and media implicated in these processes
are in themselves not constitutive elements of social systems,
but rather parts of their respective environments. Communication
systems are firmly linked to these peripheral agents
and elements. These points are also referred to as structural
couplings. Systems of communication are structurally coupled to
certain social, political, institutional sources, environments
or contexts, upon which they depend and within the parameters
of which they function. Considering possibilities of societal
change, one may discern that changes of social systems sometimes
occur as the result of changing communication structures. However,
it is also possible that changing the structural couplings themselves
may incite changes within communication systems.

2.2 Defining Media

In order to communicate some form of
medium must be applied. Communication without the use of media
is not conceivable. The thoughts and considerations of a cognitive
system are private and non-observable. Thus, various media have
always been necessary to establish communication and, by extension,
to constitute social systems. Without media communication cannot
take place and social systems cannot exist. A person wishing to
communicate with another person is always dependent on the use
of a potentially publicly accessible medium. This usually involves
language  the most widely-spread and popular medium. However,
the fixation of our society on the medium of language
results in its subsequent underestimation or even disrespect,
both of serious consequence, of other public media. Therefore,
our definition of potentially applicable media should be as broad
as possible. To my mind these include gestural and facial expression,
non-verbal behaviour, spoken and written language, music, painting,
sculpture, drawing, prints, diagrams, notes, photography, film,
video, computer, holograms as well as the various telecommunications
technologies available today.

2.3 New media versus
old media

Considering the myth of the new
media, it soon becomes apparent that their fundamental problem
is the fact that they will age. This is because they are very
rapidly superseded. The media artist Bettina Lockemann has pointed
out that the faster a new medium becomes known and established,
the faster it ages. Applying the term new media implies
the direct or indirect use and/or acceptance of an ideological
system of opinions and values primarily based on notions of originality,
innovation and outbidding, historically stemming from modern avant-garde
movements. Particularly in the realm of art, in which innovation,
hype and outbidding caused by new forms of expression play an
extremely important role for communication, an abundance of literature
has been published during the past few years on the so-called
new and its rapid aging. Indeed the faster information
spreads on what is new, the faster it in turn becomes old
is perhaps the most applicable argument at present. It follows
that in order to be considered as new for as long as possible,
the medium needs to be introduced and distributed as slowly as
possible.

2.4 Irritation

The function of what is new is to irritate.
It is primarily irritating by virtue of its deviating from what
is habitual and old or past. In this connection, the way in which
psychic and social systems react to these irritations is decisive.
In general, this may occur in one of two ways: [firstly], the
inner assimilation of and adaptation to what is new as acceptable
and common, or [secondly], the warding off of the irritation as
disturbing and ascribing it to the external environment. Which
one of the respective possibilities is ultimately chosen by a
given communication system cannot be foreseen by considering the
source of irritation, but rather only by examining the reactions
and related communicative responses to it. This means that, on
grounds of their novelty, artistic interventions in social systems
may incite more or less powerful irritations.

2.5 Interventions

In the art context, the term intervention
possesses various different precedents. The Situationistische
Internationale centred around Guy Debord represents a decisive
influence, but also the Sit In movement of the early 1960s
in the USA, and most importantly the ultimate moment in which
the term Happening was suddenly linked to notions
of political activism. Related concepts outline terms such as
artistic performance or actionism, as well as the term interaction
or interactivity that may also be applied.

What is most interesting about the concept
of artistic intervention and about the irritations it causes,
is that the irritations themselves can only be evaluated and processed
within the system in which they occur. For instance, the way a
given artist may provoke the world of politics can only be an
offer, inspiration or irritation to the latter, only able to process
and assimilate it as social change according to its own momentary
capacities and adaptability. At this point, the term of social
change by means of provocation is of significance. Here too, it
is decisive how we choose to and are capable of defining different
concepts of social and societal change.

3. Artistic interventions
in social space

3.1 Exchange and urban space

Exchange is one of the most basic forms
of social interaction. During the past few years, there have been
several artistic projects based on the notion of exchange. Usually
they comprise works that function relatively well because the
audience is actively involved. Curiosity for the object of exchange
is generally stronger than scepticism towards what may potentially
be an unfair deal. In this way a market evolves as the location
in which supply and demand intersect. But they do not establish
prices, but rather varying forms of (social) exchange, that is
communication.

3.1.1 Clegg & Guttmann:
The Public Open Library, 1993

An early, yet still topical project
comes from the two artists Michael Clegg and Martin Guttmann.
After a preliminary experimental run in Graz, they installed an
open public library in three suburbs in Hamburg from May till
September 1993. In contrast to normal libraries that often exude
an intimidating or even oppressive atmosphere, this project was
marked by an open, free-flowing form of self-organization, and
the administration of principles of exchange. (Reproduction 1)

The library was installed in three converted
switchboxes of the Hamburg Electricity Works, erected in three
especially selected locations representing "in-between spaces"
within the surrounding urban environment. (Reproduction
2) Based on statistical data, the artists chose three different
suburbs: Volksdorf, a more elevated area, in which 43.3% of the
inhabitants had graduated from high school and/or possessed other
forms of higher education; Barmbek-Nord (13.6%), a densely populated,
mixed, middle-class area; and finally Kirchdorf-Süd marked
by a decidedly low level of education and income. (7.9%). (Reproduction
3)Ulf Wuggenig together with students from the Department
of Cultural Studies at Lüneburg University worked on a sociological
survey of the area to accompany the project. Thus, there is empirical
data available on the successes and failures of the project.

The inhabitants of each respective suburb
were asked to donate books. They were also asked which sorts of
books should be contained in the ideal library. Conceivably, the
donated books themselves were in stark contrast to these ideals.
(Reproduction
4) Now, what is particularly interesting is how the project
evolved at its various different locations, which sorts of books
were added or removed, and how the growing number of books came
about in the first place. The project worked best in Volksdorf.
There, even a citizens initiative was founded to continue
the open public library after the project was over. In Barmbek,
the number of books decreased consistently, but the project did
manage to continue till the end. In Kirchdorf, the library was
destroyed. Within several days, the donated books had almost completely
disappeared. (Reproduction 5)

In the same year, the two artists ran
an open public music library in Firminy/France. (Reproduction 6) They
asked the inhabitants of an Unité dHabitation
built by Le Corbusier in 1956 to put a selection from their respective
music collections at their disposal. The library stock subsequently
comprised cassette recordings of the submitted selections. The
music library was located on the sixth floor of the apartment
building. It included three elements: the presentation bookcase,
seven photographs, also used for the cassette covers, as well
as a listening station with all the necessary equipment and headphones,
situated on the second level in the apartment. According to Clegg
& Guttmann it was most interesting to find out which music
was generally selected by the ground floor inhabitants. It became
increasingly apparent that the buildings inhabitants were
subdivided according which storey they were living on and their
social class and work.

3.1.2 Apolonija Sustersic:
Video Home Video Exchange, 1999

The Slovenian female artist Apolonija
Sustersic recently presented a similar work, also based on principles
of exchange and described as a "research project in communication"
in Kunstverein Münster. (Reproduction 7) This artist was primarily
interested in the social function of suburban architecture and
the way it is represented in the movies. In the installation video
home video exchange, the viewer could watch films selected
by Sustersic that deal with the themes of urbanity and sub-urbanity
such as "Ice Storm" by Ang Lee, "Blue Velvet"
by David Lynch, "Lola" by Rainer Werner Faßbinder
and "Halloween" by John Carpenter. An advertisement
in a daily newspaper (Reproduction 8) invited citizens to donate
private video films dealing with the themes of the house and garden.
In return they could take one of the other films back home. In
addition, Sustersic planned on awarding prizes to the best ten
home videos and to sell them in an edition of ten in the museums
bookstore. However, as no more than fifteen videos were submitted,
prizes were ultimately not awarded. Earlier, the artist had organized
the same project in the Project Space of Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana,
where both interaction and exchange seemed to work much better.
In an email she wrote to me:

I mean: - exchange...literaly with
people who are living in Munster and who are also mainly the
public of the Kunstverein. The work is refering to Munster as
a city with small (tourist) center and big suburbian areas.

- not only communication between
work and viewer but also between the visitors - participators
who are participating in the Exchange.

- communication between the Kunstverein
and the city, and the wider public not only the usual visitors
of the kinstverein.

The project was advertised through
other media as well in order to inform other audiences (not only
art audience)....

3.1.3 The Exchange Theory

Exchange is one of the most significant
social mechanisms allowing the direct or indirect interaction
or communication of two or more individuals. The ceremonial or
symbolic aspects of exchange are often more important than purely
economic factors. Already in the 1920s Bronislaw Malinowski
examined the cultural significance of exchange in connection with
the cohabitation of communities. Particularly anthropological
analyses of the Polynesian Kula Ring or of the Potlatch of North
West Coastal Indians make clear the communicative importance of
giving and the symbolic meaning of exchange. Theories of social
exchange in emulation of Claude Levi-Strauss (1949) distinguish
different forms of exchange: the direct, limited exchange and
the generalized exchange via a third party (Peter Ekeh 1974).
In the case of generalized exchange, emotional participation is
not that strong. Theories of social exchange are based on the
premise that people strive towards the maximization of their net
rewards (gross rewards minus extra charges). According to the
resource theory of social exchange by Foa&Foa 1976, typical
rewards resulting from social interaction include love (affection,
warmth, support), status (prestige, self-esteem, self-respect),
information (advice, opinions, instructions, explanations), money,
goods and service. On the other hand, the extra charges
of social exchange may include time, anger, interferences, effort
and uncertainty.

3.2 Nationality

3.2.1 Jens Haaning

In principle, anything is exchangeable,
including ones nationality. In 1997/98 the Danish artist
Jens Hananing founded an office for the exchange of citizenship.
(Reproduction
9) (Reproduction
10) Haaning describes his aims as follows:

OFFICE FOR EXCHANGE OF CITIZENSHIP
P.O. BOX 160, 1043 VIENNA

AUSTRIA

Office for Exchange of Citizenships
aim is:

-To arrange the exchanges of citizenship

-To assist people in their contact
with the relevant authorities who want to exchange their citizenship

-To investigate the need for the
exchange of citizenship

-To promote the idea of OEC 
exchange of citizenship

-To accumulate knowledge that is
relevant to the idea of OEC

If you are interested in exchanging
your citizenship, please write to our post box.

Your letter should include:

Which citizenship you have at the
moment

Which citizenship or citizenships
you are interested in

What you are willing and/or able
to pay for the change of your citizenship.

We cannot guarantee that you will
have your citizenship exchanged, but we promise that we will
do our best.

In 1996, Haaning produced a work in
progress situation in the Vleeshaal in Middelburg (Reproduction 11) , in which
the Maras Confectie textile factory run by Turks in
Vlissingen near Middelburg was moved into the exhibition space
itself. This included the entire factory, from the production
section, the office and the break room. The Turkish, Iranian and
Bosnian employees continued working as usual in de Vleeshaal.

Haanings idea of granting foreigners
free entry to certain locations (Reproduction 12) is another
example of a very simple yet highly effective intervention in
urban space and the institutions contained within it. This was
the case during the opening exhibition Ontom at Galerie
für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig as well as at a
public swimming pool in Denmark which especially foreigners could
enter free of charge.

This February, in the Kunstraum Innsbruck,
Haaning organized a workshop (Reproduction 13) in which only foreign citizens
living in Innsbruck were invited to sew a flag designed by the
artist and which was given to visitors free of charge as a means
of distributing it. The flag itself is fictional. (Reproduction
14) Its design is somewhat reminiscent of the flags of Djibouti,
Equatorial Guinea or Guyana. Its colours remind of Ethiopia and
Guinea but also India.

3.2.2 Judith Siegmund:
Social Noises III (The aesthetic of experience)

In August 2000, the Berlin artist Judith
Siegmund will carry out a highly interesting work entitled
Social Noises III (The aesthetic of experience) in Frankfurt/Oder
and Slubice (Poland). (Reproduction 15) This work addresses, amongst
other things, notions such as xenophobia, both a most topical
and tabooed issue in Germany. The artist will collaborate with
high-school art students and the Museum Junge Kunst in Frankfurt/Oder
to work out questions for an interview with the citys inhabitants.
(Reproduction
16) The questions will refer to changes occurring since German
reunification, hospitality to foreigners, the way one perceives
foreign cultures and how the city Frankfurt/Oder is presented
by the media. Here are some sample questions: What do you think
has changed most in Frankfurt/Slubice since German reunification?
Have you ever experienced hospitality to foreigners in other countries?
How do you view cultural coexistence? Are you happy about people
from other countries living in Frankfurt/Oder? Have you ever heard
negative reports of Frankfurt/Oder? Siegmund intends on displaying
large banners bearing excerpts from the interviews of Frankfurt/Oder
citizens in the Lenée and Oderturm shopping malls. The
banners will measure 6 by 2 metres in size and bear red writing
on a white ground. They will include captions such as "In
Africa, foreigners get more work than the indigenous inhabitants",
or "I think that Polish people are less envious than we think",
or "Many Germans go over there to the brothels". Additionally,
20,000 questionnaires will be distributed as a special supplement
of the Frankfurt edition of the Oderzeitung newspaper from the
Mark Brandenburg. Participants deposit their completed questionnaires
in the respective boxes located near various shopping centres.

On the Polish side of the border (in
front of the Collegium Polonicum), more banners (in Polish) will
also be displayed with further excerpts from interviews, arranged
in such a way to only be visible after crossing the border. (Reproduction
17) The same questions will be distributed in Polish as a
supplement of the Gazeta Slubicka, a regional newspaper published
in an edition of 2,000 copies. This work also appears to aim at
perturbing and irritating established habits of communication,
views and convictions, in the hope of inciting a more positive
mode of social acceptance and integration.

3.2.3 Erik Göngrich:
Interface Rue du Chevaleret (1998/99)

From December 1998 to April 1999, the
Berlin architect and artist Erik Göngrich (batofar scholarship
holder in Paris: batofar is a lightship anchored on the River
Seine in the 13th arrondissement; (Reproduction 18) performed
an exceptionally interesting intervention in this part of Paris.
The 13th arrondissement is a suburb with a high percentage
of foreigners and a high rate of unemployment, and is currently
subject to much pressure to (re)develop. It is roughly subdivided
into two parts; on the one hand comprising old buildings between
two and four storeys high, interspersed with the 25 to 40 floor
apartment towers of Les Olympiades (developed during the 1960s
and 1970s). On the other, the newly-built Bibliothèque
Nationale by Dominique Perrault is nearby.

Göngrich carried out different
projects in two buildings on the same street, Rue du Chevaleret:
firstly a hostel for foreigners run by Sonacotra(Société
Nationale de Création pour les Travailleurs) (Reproduction
19) and secondly a building for the homeless belonging to
the Salvation Army and designed by Le Corbusier in 1933. Originally,
Algerian immigrant workers lived in the Sonacotra building, 63
Rue de Chevaleret, that now primarily houses immigrant workers
from Black Africa.

The second building is the main building
of the Paris Salvation Army in 41/43 Rue de Chevaleret, also called
Cité du Refuge. (Reproduction 20) The building was constructed
by Le Corbusier in 1933 as a model of educative architecture with
the intent of educating people to the better. Originally, the
visitor, entering the building across a footbridge could reach
the middle of the entrance hall moving along a curvilinear reception
desk, moving up to the first floor and entering the library, leading
out onto a terrace bearing Le Corbusiers sculptural work
made of a labyrinthine arrangement of flower planters. Now, the
terrace is kept closed, the flower labyrinth, an important work
by Le Corbusier, was removed in 1991 and the library was converted
into offices. (Reproduction 21) The only remaining meeting
point is the central hall that is hermetically sealed off from
the outside world by a wall made of glass bricks. All the other
rooms in the building are private. The inhabitants are not allowed
to take a visitor along into their rooms. The living quarters
are strictly divided according to gender.

Göngrich interconnected these two
locations by means of a guided tour, starting and ending at Batofar
(Reproduction
22) . In the Sonacotra building, Göngrich organized an
exhibition in cooperation with its inhabitants presented in the
only, incidently windowless, meeting room in the buildings
basement. (Reproduction 23) The exhibition attempted
to show the city outside on the buildings inside, including
various local citizens initiatives, the presentation of
associations and other groups, the project Paris Rive Gauche
serving to inspire reactions, and provoke discussion and the exchange
of ideas amongst the suburbs inhabitants. (Reproduction 24) The
second stop on the artists guided tour was the entrance
hall of Cité de Refuge in which Göngrich placed one
of his foam objects that attempted to refer to the history of
the building; other foam works made by people living in the hostel
were also on display. (Reproduction 25) The foam objects in the waiting
room at Cité du Refuge were combined with slides of some
of the inhabitants and of quotes from interviews with them, projected
onto the board bearing the names of those who financially supported
the original project by Le Corbusier. The walk then continued
through various different areas of the arrondissement (Reproduction
26) , such as Les Olympiades and ended after approximately
six hours at the installation work in the ships lighthouse.

Göngrichs project is situated
on a highly complex level of discourse. The sculptural presentation
of useable foam objects, the information notice boards placed
in an area that is usually not accessible to the public, the slide
projections, and the personal guidance by the artist himself also
deserving particular mention  together succeeded in changing
the visitors consciousness and understanding of the complex
urban and social predicaments inherent to this part of Paris.
Göngrichs approach seems particularly suited to disclosing
the intricate processes of urban transformation occurring in a
suburb in the age of telecommunication, that are otherwise almost
impossible to visually represent. Göngrich successfully combines
and interconnects multifarious levels of activity; at least one
from each of the fields of information, politics and aesthetics.
The artists work aims at the unification of various, usually
divided communication systems.

4. Urban Space and the
New Media

4.1 Clarification of terms

The World Wide Web exists as we know
it since the end of 1993, that is for approximately six-and-a-half
years. That is not really a long time. It evolved far more rapidly
than normal developments usually require in real life.
One quarter of a year of net history has been defined as one year
of real life. Thus we have a period of approximately 25 years
of net history behind us. This also corresponds well with the
speed and rate of distribution of artworks depending on the net.

All newly-developed media are usually
not applied in an innovative manner during their formative stage.
Generally, they initially serve to reproduce or imitate older
media such as text, photography, film or sound. "Faster,
cheaper, further" is often the slogan fuelling the development
of new media. Only after some time of intensive use of the respective
medium do experiences of it begin to become significant. Only
then do the specific possibilities of a medium become apparent.
The world wide web is only now in the process of discovering,
comprehending and testing its intrinsic properties as a medium.

4.2 Artistic interventions on
the net

The situation is not particularly enlightening
if, on the grounds of these theoretical guidelines, one attempts
to seek artworks that use the internet as a means of social and/or
artistic intervention into urban space. To date there are only
very, very few profound, significant works that really function
in terms of social interaction between the net and urban space.
Most works are only informative or documentary and hardly take
into consideration the specific properties or possibilities of
the net. Thus, it appears that the net is presently still in an
experimental phase of its evolution. Some ideas and concepts seem
to be construed in the right direction, but often their realization
is doomed to failure due to the conditions and relations both
in the net and in real life.

In the past, it has become apparent
that net-based interventions worked particularly well in those
cases in which they precisely define the interface to real space.
If the work not only functions in the internet, but also possesses
a significant counterpoint on the other side of the net as it
were, in real life, then their specific structural coupling in
form of a reciprocal irritation between the two systems appears
particularly noteworthy. Often, most works of art situated at
the interface between the net and urban space involve the problem
of observation, or rather where precisely the observer
or viewer is located. The border between VR and RL has two sides
of which only one, namely the side you are looking at it from,
is visible at any given moment. This is what makes it so difficult
to simultaneously observe the other side of that border. Thus,
one is always only on one side of this crucial distinction, either
in the net or in urban space. But is not
possible to be on both sides at once without crossing the border.
A work of net-art is always located there where the respective
user accesses it: in America, Asia, Europe, Africa or Australia.
It is countered by the physical existence of the local topography,
a real space with a real geographical location. The net and real
space are thus necessarily always entirely segregated.
When one is in real space one does not consider himself conceivably
being part of a work of net-art, and inversely, the user of a
work of net-art does not have a real physical relationship with
the environment which is depicted in the work he views.

4.3 Interventions between
virtual reality and real life

4.3.1 Heath Bunting

The net-pioneer Heath Bunting particularly
successfully exploits the net as an extension of real life, and
real life as an extension of the net. More so than any other net-artist,
he picks out the interface between virtual reality and real life
as the central theme of his artistic pursuits. Especially those
interested in learning about how to establish simple, yet effective
structural couplings between urban space and the net should have
a good look at his extensive oeuvre.

In 1996 for example, Heath Bunting wrote
the URL www.irational.org/x
in chalk on the walls of various buildings at different locations
all over the world.Those users who noticed the URL (Reproduction
27) and typed it into the location field of their browser
were asked to complete a questionnaire stating where they had
seen the text, who they they thought the author was and what the
sign means to them. (Reproduction 28)

The work entitled Closed Circuit Television
World Wide Watch employs four web cams used for the surveillance
of public spaces. (Reproduction 29) IThe first window contains
four camera shots. The user is able to access images being broadcasted
live from New York (Reproduction 30) , Oviedo, Spain, Broadgate,
United Kingdom and Gütersloh, Germany. The user is asked
to notify the nearest police station by internet fax if he sees
any crimes being committed at any one of these locations. The
resulting list of reports may also be accessed. (Reproduction 31) Interestingly
enough however, the web cams are used unknowingly by each of the
participants, and they are therefore part of an entirely new structure.
(Reproduction
32: Original Web Site by Manhattan Transfer)

In 1999, Bunting realised a project
at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada (Reproduction 33) employing
the possibilities offered by internet radio stations (that can
be received world-wide), illegally broadcasting from a pirate
radio station in the Banff area. (Reproduction 34: Weekly
Schedule) Again, in this work, the artist considers the interface
dividing the net from real space. As an intervention it serves
to render visible the structural couplings between the internet
and urban space.

4.4 Participation

In connection with the evolution of
new telecommunications media, the notion of citizen involvement
in processes of urban development and city planning has recently
been fundamentally revised. Several teams of artists, architects
and urban developers are currently generating new concepts and
projects dealing with this topic.

4.4.1 Institute of applied urbanism:
Divercity

Recently, the Berlin based Institute
of applied urbanism (ifau) (Bäucker, Heinemann, Schmidt,
Schuler), in collaboration with the Berlin architects Inge and
Ulrich Königs presented a proposal via the internet, concerning
the application of the open source concept (in use
for several years now, particularly in connection with the Linux
system for the development of computer software) to methods and
processes of urban planning and development. (Reproduction 35) In a
manifesto they recently published onthe net with the title Divercity
they have made interesting propositions:

If one were to apply the open source
model to the realm of urban planning, this would first of all
remove the conceptual sovereignty from the municipal government
and its respective developers and affiliated agents in terms
of fixed temporal and spatial parameters (the source code needs
to be accessible at all times), and would allow all sorts of
different people to intervene and participate in the processes
determining urban development. Thus, urban space would no longer
be predetermined according to certain given rules and regulations,
but rather would be treated much like a consumer product, being
gradually ameliorated over time through the active participation
of various (competent) parties voicing their respective needs
and interests. The removal of conceptual sovereignty
refers above all to the system of predefined, clearly result-oriented
urban planning, by which urban space is often determined on the
grounds of certain (unclear) prognoses. Establishing a more process-oriented,
constantly revisable approach to urban development is by no means
aimed at its complete deregulation, but rather seeks to incite
a shift of responsibility, resulting in a different realization
and enactment of central tasks.

Introducing broader time-space parameters
makes more traditional approaches to result-bound urban planning
seem no longer feasible. Alternative, process-based methods need
to be found serving to change the urban developer from a conventional
planner/designer to more of an organizer.

In September and October 2000, the team
of architects will organize an urban design competition for the
grounds of the prior OBrien barracks in Schwabach near Nuremberg.
Visitors will be invited to play around with a model of the site
built in a scale of 1:87, thus reflecting notions of changeability
and constant revision. (Reproduction 36) The movable model, in its
ability to show interventions and alternative positions resembles
a somewhat playful instrument of planning and communication. Collages
made of photographs of the model and of the site itself will be
published in newspapers, on posters and in the internet, with
the hope of inspiring reactions and the urge to participate.

At the same time, a website will be
installed on which one will be able to see the current changes
taking place in situ. The grounds will be represented in scale.
A special software programme will make it possible to intervene
and participate in the redevelopment and design of this experimental
area. The modifications and proposals submitted via the internet
will be processed as a re-entry to the real, and integrated into
the "real" model. Thus, reciprocal interaction and irritation
between virtual reality and real life will undoubtedly ensue.
Those interested may visit so-called "log.lounges" (Reproduction
37) situated in Nuremberg, Erlangen, Schwabach and Fürth,
offering information on the current state of the open source planning
project and from where supra-regional participation in the development
process itself is possible via the net.

4.4.2 Superflex: Karlskrona2 and
Wolfsburg2

In 1998, the Danish group of artists
called Superflex (including Jakob Fenger, Bjornsterne Christiansen
and Rasmus Nielsen) conceived a virtual 3-D model of the city
of Karlskrona in Sweden (Reproduction 38) , Karlskrona2,
in which inhabitants and guests are invited to erect virtual buildings
and other constructs and discuss problems of urban development
by means of discussion rooms via the internet. (Reproduction 39) Currently,
some 20 people are actively involved in the discussion. In September
2000, a large screen will be installed in the "real"
city of Karlskrona showing projections of the developments taking
place in Karlskrona2. Recently, Superflex launched a second project
dealing with the predicament of urban development in Wolfsburg.
(Reproduction
40) There is already a discussion room for this project (Reproduction
41) , and the remaining supplementary tools are currently
under work. Norbert Käthler, an urban planner from Wolfsburg
has already voiced his opinions on the project:

The approach of Superflex permits
an entirely novel form of citizen participation in public planning.
The internet introduces a method of addressing groups of people,
that are conceivably represented less well in the context of
conventional modes of interaction (such as public meetings and
political committee meetings). This may result in young people,
particularly those who are used to dealing with the electronic
media, stating their opinions and suggestions more actively.

As an urban planner, I think Superflexs
approach is interesting, especially if it were to be fully integrated
in all communication systems, and above all in these areas where
the realms of public administration and of the private citizen
intersect.

The group of architects, urban planners
and programmers calling themselves Maila-Push from
Darmstadt have also established a new form of structural coupling
between the problems of citizen partizipation in urban planning
processes and the popularity of computer games. They created an
urban development computer game based on the topography of the
city of Offenbach near Frankfurt/Main, in which the player is
required to fulfil certain tasks. (Reproduction 41a) The
group proposes among other ideas that above a given score, the
user of the computer game should be invited to take part in a
real competition, such as a go-cart race. Central urban
problem areas in Offenbach, including the so-called Ebene
1 in the city centre, the Tambourbad, the suburb
of Lohwald and so on, are thus rendered topical, playfully linked
to the possibilities offered by the new media. The young architects
hope to achieve a new form of reflecting upon and reacting to
central concerns of the city.

4.4.4 Programming urban spaces
in Quake Level 1

Another type of urban space is also
becoming increasingly dominant in the world of computer games.
According to their own priorities young artists, architects or
urban planners may take in using the new media, the accents may
be set that variously emphasize aspects of the game, of urban
development or of aesthetic pleasure without didactiszism. In
any case, the possibilities offered by object-oriented programming
enable the generation of an entirely new surface aesthetic. Recently,
because of the freely-accessible Quake Level 1 source code, some
few artists have started programming new architectonic environments
and spaces, permitting up to 16 players to play Quake in real
time, either via intranet links from interconnected stations,
but via the internet itself. The most interesting aspect of the
game is that the majority of its data, including its textures,
geometries and spatial determinants are stored on the users
hard disk; a remarkably rapid real time transmission is afforded
by the fact that only the respective coordinates of the opponents
moves need to be transmitted. Tom Ehninger (Reproduction 42), Holger
Friese (Reproduction
43), noroomgallery (Reproduction 44) and Christine Meierhofer
(Reproduction
45) contributed programmes for inspiringly vivid virtual spaces
to Re-load, a show organized by shift e.V. in Berlin
in 1999.

4.5 Digital Cities

4.5.1 The digital city of Amsterdam

On January 15th 1994 the
world could witness the première of the first digital city
in history in the World Wide Web. Using the internet provider
xs.4.all, Walther van der Cruissen, Geert Lovink, Marleen Sticker,
Patrice Riemens, David Garcia and others developed a virtual city
in Amsterdam in which websites and e-mail accounts could be installed
and managed and chat lines were established. This is the only
example of a real virtual community deserving mention
and still existing today. It has approximately 100,000 inhabitants.
The digital city of Amsterdam explicitly employs the metaphors
of urban space, thereby facilitating a parallel construct in the
realm of virtual space. Especially the first interface of 1994
(Reproduction
46) exhibits its creators metaphoric use of symbolic
types of building such as the "railway station", the
"museum", the "café", the "library",
the "post office", the "tourist information"
or the "newsstand". In addition there are places
or squares and apartments, and chats are
generally described as cafés. There is a hospital
as well as other municipal institutions, and even the Amsterdam
police corps has been given a virtual central headquarter in this
virtual city with its own chat line. (Reproduction 47) Furthermore,
in this city, squatting is also allowed. If one of
its inhabitants happens to leave a website unattended or vacant
(as a ghost-site), other net-users can simply proceed to occupy
it. Citizens choosing to move out of the digital city are given
a gravestone in the virtual cemetery of the city. (Reproduction
48)

Now, in retrospect, Walther van der
Cruissen is critical of the notion of the digital city. He claims
that the digital city of Amsterdam rapidly evolved from a space
of uninhibited social interaction into an educational device.
Its initial social significance increasingly diminished. Today,
van der Cruissen seems to criticize the concept that such a project
is only useful in terms of its emulating the structure of a real
city, rather than in its attempt at founding a new, autonomous
city in sync with the inherent specifics and possibilities of
the world wide web.

4.5.2 Berlin  International
City (Summer 1994  1.4.1998)

Some six months later, the Berlin group
of artists centred around Joachim Blank, Karl-Heinz Jeron, Barbara
Aselmeier and Armin Haase launched a project examining the specific
structures offered by the net more closely. Originally, the idea
of an international city had been conceived of as getting citizens
involved in a network providing information on their city. Many
communal or commercial information networks are based on experiences
of the international city of Berlin or in the digital city of
Amsterdam. It was possible to access the city either as one of
its inhabitants or as a visitor. (Reproduction 49) Visitors
were not allowed to enter certain areas reserved for the citys
inhabitants. In addition, a tool powered by CGI script was put
at the users disposition, enabling him/her to determine
the very configuration of the citys urban structure. (Reproduction
50) A website provided information on who had just logged
in (Reproduction
51) and a special IS chat channel facilitated direct communication.
(Reproduction
52) The revised IS surface showed the respective percentage
of particular sectors or categories within the overall structure.
(Reproduction
53) In this formative stage of net-art, it was noticeable
how strongly the International City was oriented towards the art
world. Many artists such as Eva Grubinger, Pit Schultz or Philipp
Pocock already created their first incunabulae of net-art as early
as 1995 (Reproduction
54) . A further novelty of the international city was its
radio station, still in use today as an autonomous system with
the original layout . (Reproduction 55)

The project lasted for a period of approximately
five years before its initiators decided to remove their city
from the internet. They had also come to the ultimate conclusion
that neither a virtual community nor a space of social interaction
had really evolved, but that rather they themselves were the only
ones providing the city with the necessary input to keep it alive.
Looking back, one is forced to declare experiments with virtual
communities as failures. They were optimistically launched in
numerous different variations during the latter half of the 1990s
and were then soon abandoned. However, as soon as the notion of
the virtual community was factually dead on the internet, it became
an object of scientific research. In 1999, the International Research
Centre for Cultural Studies in Vienna declared the theme of communities
as a central area of research. On the other hand, precisely the
example of the digital city discloses the shortcomings of the
urban metaphor. The sites are only two-dimensional. They tend
to be inspired by the aesthetisc of graphic design rather than
by a real, three-dimensional understanding of space.

4.6 Visualising Abstract Data

An important, thoroughly unresolved
problem is concerned with the visualisation of exceedingly large
quantities of abstract data. The decisive information flows and
technological transmissions are entirely invisible. Therefore,
it is not surprising that artists have chosen to deal with this
phenomenon in their projects.

4.6.1 Joachim Blank/Karl-Heinz
Jeron: re:re:represent, Nuremberg 2000

The work entitled "re:re:represent"
(Reproduction
56) examines the question of how the global financial markets
and the institutions responsible for the transferral of capital
in the information societies manage, if at all, to visually represent
and record their transactions. Blank/Jeron use the data from their
own analysis of a series of key terms applied by Germanys
largest internet broker Consors to create flow charts
and pie diagrams presented either as laser ink jet prints or 3-dimensional
illuminated units. (Reproduction 57) The accompanying software
especially developed for the project is applied to analyse user
information and contributions to the community boards on the grounds
of data size and the number of times particular selected words
are used.The community boards of the website of the online-broker
"Consors" provide on the one hand the source material
of the data analysis for "re:re:represent". On the other
hand they represent an exemplary object of research in the context
of an increasingly mixed mode of internet communication and stock
exchange terminology within the "new economy".

5. Conclusion

The term of urban space functions as
a metaphor in the context of the net. For on the net nothing is
neither urban nor spatial. It is far more
concerned with different terms of observation. Distinctions may
be more or less helpful in our attempt at discerning the importance
of telecommunications technology in the context of communication.
The internet is a highly complex and operationally closed media
circuit, entirely dependent on external input provided by the
user. Nothing can be put into the net that has not been transformed
into the binary code of data, and no data can be put out of the
net into the real space without having been converted into a publicly
accessible medium by means of specific effectory devices such
as screens, printers and loudspeakers.

According to which side of the barrier
we are on, the surface of the internet may appear
entirely different. We experience the net from an external position,
as structurally coupled to both our physical and its technological
environment. But what might the net look like from within? We
are not able to imagine what the surface dividing the internet
from real space looks like from inside the net, as we are not
able to cross the border. However, we have every reason to presume
that the net is capable of observing us. It records and registers
every minute fluctuation occurring between itself and its environment.
It processes and stores every tiny bit of incoming data. Seen
from within, the microphone, the video-in, the keyboard and the
data uploads are the internets outermost sensory peripheries.
These tools are its sensory devices with which it is capable of
observing us in real time. In its log files and its routing informations
we are constantly being observed and pursued in all the moves
we make. The log files know where we are and were we were, when
we last accessed the net.

All this would lend itself perfectly
to a new science fiction movie in the style of Alien 4. The alien
internet watches us secretly and attentively via its log files
and its routers. Then, in the next scene, a dumb, unsuspecting
user sitting down at his small, tiny keyboard in his dark lonely
home in the hills of Virginia to read his latest e-mails unlocks
the gateway. Then its too late. Captain Ripley is asking: Quick,
quick, bring me the plan of the cable tunnels! Commander Jordan
is shouting: Where the hell is the main switch? But its already
too late, the alien is in. Therefore I would like to end my lecture
with a short audio piece from welcome in wonderlandby Julia Scher, a early piece of net-art dating from february
1995. (Reproduction
58)